Lohuecotitan

Lohuecotitan is an extinct genus of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur which lived during the Late Cretaceous in Spain. The only species known in the genus is Lohuecotitan pandafilandi, described and named in 2016. The fossil remains of Lohuecotitan were discovered in the site of Lo Hueco, Fuentes, Cuenca, which is part of the Villalba de la Sierra Formation. The formation dates from the Upper Campanian to the Lower Maastrichtian, and would have represented a muddy coastal floodplain. The locality was discovered in 2007 during the cutting of a little hill for installation of the railway of the Madrid-Valencia high-speed train. More than 10 000 fossils have been collected, almost half of which belong to titanosaurs comprising more than twenty sets of partial skeletons in anatomical connection or with a low dispersion of their skeletal elements. Teeth and braincases were also recovered. The material belongs to at least two distinct types of titanosaur. The holotype specimen of Lohuecotitan, HUE-EC-01, is a disarticulated partial skeleton consisting of cervical, dorsal, sacral, and caudal vertebrae, ribs, an ulna, both ischia, a pubis, a femur, a fibula, and a tibia, along with some indeterminate remains. The name of Lohuecotitan combines a reference to the type locality with titan (which refers to the Greek titans). The specific name, pandafilandi, is derived from the name of a giant, Pandafilando de la fosca vista, in the novel Don Quixote. Lohuecotitan was recognized by its describers as having a number of unique characteristics (autapomorphies) not seen in other titanosaurs. In the dorsal vertebrae, the edges of the postspinal laminae extend outwards. In the first several caudal vertebrae, the medial spinoprezygapophyseal and spinopostzygapophyseal laminae respectively connect to the prespinal and postspinal laminae on the bottom surface. In addition, due to the way that the prespinal and postspinal laminae project upwards, the neural spine of the vertebra appears to be V-shaped from the side, and resemble a Greek cross in cross-section.